Craigslist Is Trying to Squash The Best Apartment-Finding App Out There

PadMapper is one of the best ways to
find an apartment in a city. It pulls data from a bunch of
listing sites — including Craiglist — to populate a Google Map with available apartments.

It's much easier to use than a text-based site like Craigslist, and it points its users directly
back to those listings.

But now Craiglist has sent a cease and desist letter to
PadMapper, telling it to pull Craigslist listings from the site,
TechCrunch reports. The cease and desist letter says
PadMapper violated Craigslist's terms of use, according to
TechCrunch.

But the alternative is using Craigslist's poorly-designed listing
service, which is purely text-based and offers no location
context (other than vague references to neighborhoods, like "Park
Slope" or "Tenderloin").

Thank you for all you've done for the online community in
creating Craigslist and shepherding it through so much. I was
saddened to learn Craigslist recently sent a cease and desist to
PadMapper, which is a severe punishment indeed.

In a fair society, punishments like this are handed down for bad
action. PadMapper has not engaged in this whatsoever. Please
consider allowing PadMapper to continue to live. It is one of the
top essential tools for anyone who is looking for a place to
live.

As a fan and user of both sites, I urge you to reconsider your
decision.

We'll have to agree on this one. There is literally not a better
way to search for an apartment and rapidly parse through all
available openings in a short period of time than PadMapper.